What to Believe

It's hard to know what data to believe these days - there are so many ways to manipulate things, whether it's by hand-picking source data, or changing the units on a graph axis, or who knows what else.

I don't really trust the numbers of infections and deaths because so many people probably are infected but never got tested, so won't officially be counted. On the other hand, there are stories of doctors being told to count deaths as COVID-19, even when that hasn't been proven - these stories are coming from a very skewed source, so I don't know the exact circumstances (like, is it very likely the person died of COVID-19 or related complications, but they were never officially tested?), but either way, hopefully this just helps to balance out the people who aren't being counted...

Then there's the differences in numbers of infections and deaths between countries. Why do some countries look like they're impacted much more, or have a much higher rate of infection? A couple things that need to be taken into account are the overall population of the country, and the amount of testing they are doing. For example, a smaller country that tests a lot more people, might look like it has many more infections. In reality, it's probably just seeing a more accurate picture and because they're smaller, they can likely test a greater proportion of their population. Likewise, a large country like the US can have as many confirmed cases or deaths as a smaller country, but as an overall percentage of the population it isn't as much, which is why many people here aren't taking things as seriously, because they aren't really seeing the impact of the disease first-hand.

All I know is, I don't want to get sick, or get anyone else sick, and whether or not it's overkill, the one way I can try to do that is to stay away from other people and clean anything that has been around other people before it comes into my home.